Alberto Hemsi (1898-1975)
Danze nuziali greche for cello and piano, Op.37 bis (1956)
Tre arie antiche (dalle 'Coplas Sefardies') for String Quartet, Op.30 (c.1945)
Pilpúl Sonata, Op.27 for violin and piano (1942)
Quintet in G Major for viola and string quartet Op.28 (c.1943)
Méditation (dans le style arménien) for cello and piano Op.16 (pre-1931)
ARC Ensemble
rec. 2021-22, Toronto, Canada
CHANDOS CHAN20243 [64]
The Music in Exile series has been jointly launched and sustained by Chandos. It has already reached rewardingly into the recesses of the chamber music of such exiles as Ben Haim, Fitelberg, Laks, Kaufmann and Klebanov. It now offers us music by another largely (or completely) unknown composer-exile.
Alberto Hemsi was of Jewish Sephardic heritage. He was born in Anatolia; now part of Turkey. Studies in Milan led to a return to Anatolia where he was gripped by the Holst/RVW/Bartók/Kodály-like mission of running to ground and documenting traditional Sephardic music wherever its communities’ diaspora took it. After the Great War and service in the Italian armed forces the pogroms in his homeland drove him to Rhodes, Alexandria and Cairo. The Second World War forced him into a nomadic existence that concluded in Paris.
It’s just as well that we have Chandos’s booklet notes because Hemsi is not even a household name in most quarters … or maybe it’s just me. The disc’s essay is by Simon Wynberg who is artistic director of the Toronto, Ontario-based ARC Ensemble; James Conlon - he of Zemlinsky fame - is its Honorary Chairman. The booklet is in English, German and French. By the way, ARC stands for Artists of the Royal Conservatory. Quite apart from live concerts they have recorded Weinberg for RCA.
The three brief Danze nuziali greche (Greek Wedding Dances) for cello and piano were fashioned from a work for solo piano. The first (In Honour of the Mother-in-law) is fast, loose and wild. The danza In Honour of the Bride is more thoughtful and the music is slowly paid out with a more animated sections appearing in short flashes. The last one, In Honour of the Godfather, is wild and intricate. Much of it is of lightning-celerity suggesting sprightly godfather who works out. The Tre arie antiche for string quartet, is derived from Coplas sefardies¸ dedicated to “Mme Ethel & Frank Cohen”. The set includes a gracious Ballata, a calm and warmly nostalgic Canzone (no trace of tears) and a wasp-buzzing Rondo. These two tripartite works hover around the ten minute mark.
The Pilpúl Sonata for violin and piano is in three movements running to double the duration of the disc’s first two three-part pieces. It’s a smokily melodic and convoluted work which recalls Vaughan Williams (a certain Lark) blended with Bloch in his most patently Hebraic moments. The last movement is both statuesque, rustic and dance-like. The 18-minute Viola Quintet veers between severity and delight. The textures are often dense but with a concerto-like prominence, across the four movements, to the solo viola. The Berceuse (III) is sombre, shadowy and reverential. The jewel-like miniature finale is a Rondo which inhabits a folk-dance world but patterned and dignified rather than wild. The Quintet is dedicated to the Hungarian-born and Israel-domiciled composer and violinist/viola player Ödön Pártos. This CD is rounded out with a Méditation in Armenian style for cello and piano. Its melancholy turns and twists may well remind you of Hovhaness. It’s very pleasing and is both decorously beautiful and introspective. The dedicatee is the Italian cellist Edgardo Maria Brunetti who took the work up in Egypt in the 1920s and 1930s.
These premiere recordings of works by Hemsi are cleanly and powerfully recorded by David Frost, Carl Talbot and Kevin Fallis. The team have secured an atmospheric rather than a starkly hygienic sound. This, and the quality of the music-making, suits the music’s folk origins (North Africa, Greece, Armenia and Turkey).
It’s another excellently carried through and enterprising disc from Chandos. The standards for such unusual music, appearing on disc for the first time, are high; not to be taken for granted.
Rob Barnett
Published: October 14, 2022
